Julian Schnabel’s “At Eternity’s Gate” is especially important for two reasons. It provides a new look at the final days in the life of artist Vincent van Gogh and excellent actor Willem Dafoe gives an extraordinary and memorable performance as the artist.

Collaborating on a screenplay with the eminent Jean-Claude Carrière and also with Louise Kugelberg, director Schnabel peers into the sad fate of van Gogh and the pitiful situation in which he never sold a painting. The screenplay also depicts the artist’s death in a way that counters the more accepted idea of his having committed suicide.

Throughout Dafoe is superb in the portrait he gives us of van Gogh, a nuanced look at what his life was like in intimate terms. The supporting cast is first rate too, including Rupert Friend as his supportive brother, Theo, Oscar Isaac as Gauguin, Mathieu Amalric as the important Dr. Gachet, Emmanuele Seigner as Madame Ginoux and Mads Mikkelsen in a key role as a priest.

As one has come to expect from Schnable, he creates an impressive artistic atmosphere that in this case creates a vivid sense of the time in which the artist’s final days unfold. The superb cinematography by Benoît Delhomme helps enormously in achieving the affecting visuals.

An unusual mourning scene is chilling, with van Gogh’s coffin in the center of a room, and his paintings on surrounding walls, as visitors select art that he could not sell during his life. The scene is an inkling of the fame that will eventually embrace him posthumously and the enormous prices his work will ironically command. A CBS Films release. Reviewed October 27, 2018.